Saturday, March 17, 2012

The man says he wants to make something happen, and by golly, it happens.
Here's The Teleprompter Jesus, in the flesh, talking about how he's going to make you pay more at the pump so you'll stop buying SUV's and become more fuel-efficient.

Contrast that approach with the one used in the Year Of Our Lord 2012, where new product-makers lobby Washington for subsidies, Washington mandates their use, Washington punishes their competitors (see LightSquared), and Obama then forces you to use the new product made by people who owe their very existence to Obama.

It's like watching that wasp on Animal planet, the one that stings and paralyzes a caterpillar and drags it into its nest so the baby wasps can feast until they're grown. In a way, it's beautiful.

I can't believe I haven't written anything on "Operation Fast And Furious" yet.
There's been too much insane competition for subject matter. That's my only excuse.

Here's the story as I understand it.....

The Obama administration wanted to prove that American guns were going across our border with Mexico. They wanted to show that it was guns, rather than our insane Prohibition laws, that were causing the violence along the border.

As usual, the crowdsourced explanation from Wikipedia is the best one:

The ATF gunwalking scandal came to national attention in the United States in 2011 after the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) ran a series of “gunwalking” sting operations between 2006 and 2011. This was done under the umbrella of Project Gunrunner, a project intended to stem the flow of firearms into Mexico by interdicting straw purchasers and gun traffickers within the U.S. “Gunwalking” or “letting guns walk” was a tactic whereby the ATF knowingly allowed thousands of guns to be bought by suspected arms traffickers ("gunrunners") working through straw purchasers on behalf of Mexican drug cartels.

The stated goal of allowing these purchases was to continue to track the firearms as they were transferred to higher−level traffickers and key figures in Mexican cartels, in theory leading to their arrests and the dismantling of the cartels. The tactic was questioned during the operations by a number of people, including ATF field agents and cooperating licensed gun dealers. Operation Fast and Furious, by far the largest "gunwalking" probe, led to the sale of over 2,000 firearms, of which fewer than 700 were recovered as of October 20, 2011 (2011 -10-20). A number of straw purchasers have been arrested and indicted; however, as of October 2011, none of the targeted high−level cartel figures have been arrested.

Firearms "walked" by the ATF have been found at violent crime scenes on both sides of the US−Mexico border, and have been found at the crime scenes involving deaths of many Mexicans and at least one US federal agent, Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. The “gunwalking” operations became public in the aftermath of Agent Terry's murder. As a result, dissident ATF agents came forward to Congress. As investigations have continued, the operations have become increasingly controversial in both countries, and diplomatic relations have been damaged as a result.

These weapons have been found at more than 170 crime scenes in Mexico. Another of our Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, Jaime Zapata was murdered with one of the guns. Eric Holder has been trotted in front of Congress to lie about what emails he did and didn't receive about the operation.
Obama's Attorney General, Eric Holder, is in a little trouble because of this mess, but not at the level you would expect. The White House is circling the wagons, and is putting on the Full-Nixon.

Let me repeat what happened here....

There are two explanations for the violence in Mexico - 1) American Prohibition Laws, or 2) American Guns Crossing The Border.

In an effort to sway public opinion, the ATF purchased a bunch of guns and knowingly sold them to the reps of Mexican Drug Lords.

In an effort to sway public opinion, the ATF purchased a bunch of guns and knowingly sold them to the reps of Mexican Drug Lords.

In an effort to sway public opinion, the ATF purchased a bunch of guns and knowingly sold them to the reps of Mexican Drug Lords.

I know that a lot of people love Barack Obama, and he's thrown a lot of taxpayer money to his supporters (more than any other president) and he makes good speeches that make Statists nod along with a warm damp glow of contentment. There's a competing school of thought that claims he's the dumbest human to ever step foot in the Oval Office, much less work there.

Here's CNN's Anderson Cooper on the anguish of the Zapata family. They're not letting Holder or Obama off the hook, no matter who was programming The Teleprompter during the operation:

The solution to this mess? Stop voting for Fascists.
I don't speak for every Libertarian running for office in 2012, but I don't think we'll ever, ever, ever purchase guns, sell them to the reps of Mexican Drug Lords, WATCH as they cross the border, and then lose track of them.
We will never, ever do that.
Hell, the slowest students in a Special Ed class would never, ever do that.

Statists and their apologists often claim that government spending isn't out of control if you adjust for inflation.

Bullshit.

Inflation is nothing more than government spending without legislation.

Every penny lost from these 1947 dollars was lost because of government-sponsored inflation. They printed more and more money. Flood the market with dollars, and dollars will purchase less and less.
In an honest accounting system, any record of government spending would include the amount stolen from these dollars.

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Roy Moore said about 2 a.m. Wednesday that even though he had not been declared the winner of the Republican primary for chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court that he expected to win without a runoff.

“Statistically, there is just no way we’re going to have a runoff in this race,” the former chief justice said to reporters just before leaving his election night headquarters.

Moore, the former chief justice who was removed from office refusing a federal judge’s order, said about two hours earlier that, with him well ahead of his two competitors in the Republican primary, “the people have spoken.”

Moore was eventually removed from office during his previous judgeship because he wouldn't remove his Ten Commandments statue from his courtroom. Later on he built this large statue of the Ten Commandments and had it placed in the courthouse yard.

The man does love his statues. You could safely call him the Raymond Nasher of Montgomery, if not all of Etowah County.

Moore is well known for two legal fights over the 10 Commandments.

As a judge in Etowah County, he placed a small plaque with the commandments in his courtroom. The American Civil Liberties Union sued unsuccessfully to try to have the plaque removed.

As chief justice, Moore had a more than two-ton granite monument that included the 10 Commandments placed in the rotunda of the state’s judicial building. Several organizations including the ACLU sued over the monument and a federal judge ordered Moore to remove it. Believing the order was illegal, Moore refused and was removed from office.

As a devout, foot-washing, snake-handling Libertarian, I should be objecting to Moore's statue of the Ten Commandments because of separation of church and state. Yeah, I shouldn't support my courthouses being decorated with statues of The Big Ten, scrolls from the Torah, plaques from the Kabbalah, needlepoint samplers from the Koran, or paint-by-numbers quotes from the Flying Spaghetti Monster (Bless His Noodly Appendage).

But I have to object to Moore's statue on theological grounds.

Here's why. Here's Commandment number three in its entirety:

Exodus 20:4....Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.

Moore's statue doesn't feature the entire verse. (It's kind of wordy, and would take too long to chisel.)

With his 10 Commandments statue, Judge Roy Moore has created a graven image of a law that outlaws all graven images. We aren't supposed to create any likenesses of any thing on heaven, earth, or in the water.

Read it again, folks.

Exodus 20:4....Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.

Commandment #3, which Moses supposedly brought down from the mountain, outlaws statues, paintings, pencil sketches, needlepoint samplers, that old photo of your grandparents, carvings of Christ on the cross, Michelangelo's Pieta, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, your senior portrait, your baby pictures, half of the internet, most stained glass windows, all art that isn't totally abstract, and the cover of Roy Moore's book.

I repeat: This crazed Alabama Republican has made a statue of a set of laws that outlaw statues.

I don't care who you are, that's funny.

Ordinarily I would link to the sources for all of these pictures graven images, but I don't want to spread sin.

From The Washington Examiner comes an expose of unscrupulous healthcare providers quoting a low price for medical treatment and then DOUBLING the amount charged to the customer. I look forward to breathless editorials from the New York Times, the Washington Post and 60 Minutes condemning this practice and those who oversee it.

President Obama's national health care law will cost $1.76 trillion over a decade, according to a new projection released today by the Congressional Budget Office, rather than the $940 billion forecast when it was signed into law.

Raise your hand if you are shocked. Anyone? Anybody? I didn't think so.

Democrats employed many accounting tricks when they were pushing through the national health care legislation, the most egregious of which was to delay full implementation of the law until 2014, so it would appear cheaper under the CBO's standard ten-year budget window and, at least on paper, meet Obama's pledge that the legislation would cost "around $900 billion over 10 years." When the final CBO score came out before passage, critics noted that the true 10 year cost would be far higher than advertised once projections accounted for full implementation.

The 2014 date also got Obama past the 2012 elections and also gets some distance between the 2008 Congress and the inevitable consequences of this mess.This graph is old and out of date, but it's the most recent one I could find. Like the Democrats, I like to post eye-popping charts of disastrous consequences. In this case the chart isn't horrible enough, and I apologize.

Today, the CBO released new projections from 2013 extending through 2022, and the results are as critics expected: the ten-year cost of the law's core provisions to expand health insurance coverage has now ballooned to $1.76 trillion. That's because we now have estimates for Obamacare's first nine years of full implementation, rather than the mere six when it was signed into law. Only next year will we get a true ten-year cost estimate, if the law isn't overturned by the Supreme Court or repealed by then.

Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn has said that ObamaCare will never be repealed. That's why you need to start voting for Libertarians. Mitt Romney was the John The Baptist for ObamaCare. He will be the Republican nominee for president. That's why you need to start voting for Libertarians. Fort Worth's Trinity River Vision Authority has had similar cost overruns without accomplishing much of anything but marketing. They're trying to build a massive lake downtown that will be known to your granchildren debtors as "Lake Granger", after the family of Republican Congresswoman Kay Granger. That's why you need to start voting for Libertarians.

Given that in 2022, the last year available, the gross cost of the coverage expansions are $265 billion, we're likely looking at about $2 trillion over the first decade, or more than double what Obama advertised.
UPDATE: I've done another post with additional details from the CBO report.

These are the numbers from the Congressional Budget Office. I don't think the Congressional Budget Office could properly predict the winner of a New York Giants vs. Little Sisters Of The Blind wager in the Super Bowl. Their predicted cost is very, very low. Hide and watch.

It's very simple: Let people live their own lives as they want and get the government out of our business. The Libertarian Party of Texas bases its philosophy on these core principles:

CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS. You, as stated by our nation's Founding Fathers, have the inalienable right to live, be free and prosper to your fullest potential without hindrance from any person or entity. You have the freedom to pursue your happiness as long as you respect others' rights to pursue theirs.

PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY. You are responsible for your personal choices, able to take care of yourself and capable to do for others as you expect them to do unto you. Conversely, others are free to live their lives as they see fit and are responsible for their choices. We believe in tolerance toward others and respect for self-sovereignty.

LIMITED GOVERNMENT. Your government's principal function is to protect your freedom, your unalienable rights of Life, Liberty and Property, all crucial rights for building a free and prosperous society. Government should be of the necessary size and scope, as outlined in the United States Constitution, to efficiently support its constitutional duties and effectively maintain the rule of law. The Libertarian vision of government is of a government strictly confined to its constitutional role, a government that respects civil liberties, recognizes that the individual is more important than the State, exercises fiscal restraint and understands that each generation must pay its own debts, believes in free markets and practices a non-interventionist foreign policy of "peace toward all, entangling alliances with none."

The Libertarian Party is the third largest and fastest-growing political party in Texas and in the United States. It is also the only political party to advocate truly limited government, especially as established in the U.S. Constitution by our Founders.

For a more in-depth explanation of the philosophy of liberty, view this video. To learn where the Libertarian Party of Texas stands on specific issues, please read our platform.

You are 16 trillion dollars in debt. You have undeclared wars going on all over the place. China is going to kick your ass if you don't stop borrowing money from them. Jefferson Davis didn't have as many black men living in cages as you do. There is no "moderate" or "inside the mainstream" way out of this mess. Republicrats or Demoblicans won't shut down any part of the machine. We will.

Sunday, March 11, 2012

I always enjoy the horrifying updates from this dude's blog. It's called National Death Service, and it displays the daily, weekly and monthly outrages that take place in Britain's National Health Service hospitals and clinics. The National Health Service supposedly inspired the makers of RomneyCare and ObamaCare.

One of the current disagreements in the Land O' Limey O'BamaCare is whether or not a NHS patient was attacked by a rat or a field mouse:

Are You Sure It Wasn’t A Siberian Filigree Hamster?

Staff spotted Mr Ketley stumbling around a corridor with the rat hanging from his neck by its teeth and nurses knocked it off and killed it. Hospital officials said it was a field mouse.

Ah, yes, the well-known man-eating field mouse…

But his mother Pat Boardman told the Mirror: "That's an outrageous claim. He had large, open bite marks.

"I'm appalled that this sort of thing could happen to my son in an NHS hospital in this day and age.

"He was completely helpless and terrified. It's a disgrace. He was very scared and the staff had to show him they had killed the rat to prove it could no longer hurt him."

The field mouse, I guess you mean? If you know what's good for you....

I love that guy.

In related news, here's something from Walter Russell Mead stating that 50% of all UK nursing home patients are being denied basic services because of bureaucratic ineptitude:

Fans of government health care keep telling us that government can do the job, and they point to countries like the UK as examples where single payer, government run health care systems deliver high quality, compassionate care.

They are either grossly ignorant or they are lying through their teeth.

A recent study by a British healthcare regulator finds that half of all elderly people in Britain’s nursing homes are being denied basic health services.

Half.

Some older people were forced to wait months for a doctor or nurse to treat simple health problems. No doubt they were waiting for the Bureau of Bedsore Management to review the proper procedures before issuing a bandage-changing permit.

Over the polite grumbling of many advocacy groups, the British Parliament can be faintly heard tinkering away at some far overdue legislation. No doubt the grannies will get some relief just as soon as the House of Commons passes some new laws, the House of Lords (whoever they have there now that they have chased the actual, you know, Lords out of it) sagaciously tinkers with it, the Queen signs it, the bureaucrats get all the regulations nicely written, and the memos and administrative procedures get delivered to the proper offices.

You've now been warned. The path is well-marked.

Mitt Romney advocated this crap in Massachusetts, and no one twisted his arm to make him do so. Mitt Romney wrote USA Today editorials promoting a US version of the National Death Service in 2009. No one twisted his arm to make him do so.
This is what the leading Republican candidate wants for you.

The Teleprompter Jesus has already gotten us on the road to having what the U.K. has. Rodents chewing on retirees. May his monitors go blank, may his programmers go on strike, may his battery back-ups die, and may he be required to go to a U.S. Department of Transportation maintenance facility for repairs.

You don't trust the government to deliver an important overnight package.
For some reason, a large number of us trust them to delivery healthcare when their Department Of Motor Vehicles fills us with existential dread.
Our government is notorious for spending $600 on screwdrivers and $1200 for toilet seats.

The only way to decrease the cost of something is to lower demand or increase supply. That's why we need a Free Market Healthcare system. (Please don't ever confuse the current U.S. mess with a free market system. 84% of our medical bills are paid indirectly, either through the government or through insurance programs.)
My pick for the person most likeley to lower the cost of medical care is former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson. He is running for the Libertarian Party nomination for President. The Libertarian Party supports a rat-free medical environment.

The picture of the NHS rodent-activated blood transfusion system came from here. The gravedigger poster came from The People's Cube. Hit the National Health Service tag below to read more about the ridiculously low standards that British medical teams fail to achieve.